Heroes Are My Weakness(9)

After Booker left, Annie unpacked the groceries she’d brought from the mainland, checked all the windows, shoved a steel accent table in front of the door, and slept for twelve hours. As always, she awoke coughing and thinking about money. She was drowning in debt and sick of worrying about it. She lay under the covers, eyes on the ceiling, trying to see her way out.

After Mariah had been diagnosed, she’d needed Annie for the first time, and Annie had been there, even giving up her own jobs when it got to the point that she couldn’t leave Mariah alone.

“How did I raise such a timid child?” her mother used to say. But at the end Mariah had been the fearful one, clinging to Annie and begging her not to leave.

Annie had used her small savings to pay the rent on Mariah’s beloved Manhattan apartment so her mother wouldn’t have to leave, then relied on credit cards for the first time in her life. She bought the herbal remedies Mariah swore made her feel better, the books that fed her mother’s artistic spirit, and the special foods that kept Mariah from losing too much weight.

The weaker Mariah grew, the more appreciative she became. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.” The words were balm to the little girl who still lived inside Annie’s adult soul yearning for her critical mother’s approval.

Annie might have managed to stay afloat if she hadn’t decided to fulfill her mother’s dream of one last trip to London. Relying on more credit cards, she’d spent a week pushing Mariah in a wheelchair through the museums and galleries she loved the most. The moment at the Tate Modern when they’d stopped before an enormous red and gray canvas by the artist Niven Garr had made her sacrifice worthwhile. Mariah had pressed her lips to Annie’s palm and uttered the words Annie had yearned to hear all her life. “I love you.”

Annie dragged herself out of bed and spent the morning digging through the cottage’s five rooms: a living area, kitchen, bathroom, Mariah’s bedroom, and an artist’s studio that had also served as a guest room. The artists who’d stayed here over the years had given Mariah paintings and small pieces of sculpture, the most valuable of which her mother had long ago sold off. But what had she saved?

Nothing and everything jumped out at her. The tufted-back hot pink Victorian sofa and futuristic taupe armchair, a stone Thai goddess, the bird skulls, a wall-size painting of an upside-down elm tree. The hodgepodge of objects and furniture styles were unified by her mother’s infallible sense of color—vanilla walls and solid upholstery fabrics of periwinkle, olive, and taupe. The sofa’s hit of hot pink along with an ugly iridescent painted plaster chair shaped like a mermaid provided the shock value.

As she rested over her second cup of coffee, she decided she had to be more systematic in her search. She started in the living room, listing every art object and its description in a notebook. It would be so much easier if Mariah had told her what to look for. Or if she could sell the cottage.

Crumpet pouted. You didn’t have to take your mother on that trip to London. You should have bought me a new gown instead. And a tiara.

You did the right thing, ever-supportive Peter said. Mariah wasn’t a bad person, just a bad mother.

Dilly spoke in her usual gentle manner, which didn’t make her words sting any the less. Did you do it for her . . . or did you do it for yourself?

Leo simply sneered. Anything to win Mummy’s love, right, Antoinette?

And that was the thing about her puppets . . . They spoke the truths she didn’t want to confront.

She glanced out the window and saw something moving in the distance. A horse and rider, stark against a sea of gray and white, tearing across the winter landscape, as if all the demons in hell were chasing them.


AFTER ANOTHER DAY OF COUGHING spells, naps, and indulging in her hobby of sketching goofy-looking cartoon kids to cheer herself up, she could no longer ignore the problem of using her cell. More snow last night would have made the already hazardous road impassable, and that meant another trek to the top of the cliff in search of a signal. This time, however, she’d steer clear of the house.

With her puffy down-filled coat, she was better equipped for the climb than she’d been last time. Although it was still bitterly cold, the sun was temporarily out, and the fresh snow looked as though it had been dusted with glitter. But her problems were too big for her to enjoy the beauty. She needed more than a cell signal. She needed Internet access. Unless she wanted a dealer to take advantage of her, she needed to research everything she listed in her inventory notebook, and how was she going to do that? The cottage had no satellite service. The hotel and inns offered free public Internet during the summer, but they were closed now, and even if her car could handle the trips to town, she couldn’t imagine randomly banging on doors, looking for someone who’d let her inside to Web surf.

Even with her coat, the red knit cap she’d pulled over her rambunctious hair, and the scarf she’d wrapped over her nose and mouth to protect her airways, she was shivering by the time she hiked to the top of the cliff. Glancing toward the house to make sure Theo wasn’t in sight, she found a place behind the gazebo to make her calls—the elementary school in New Jersey that hadn’t paid her for her last visit, the consignment shop where she’d left Mariah’s remaining pieces of decent furniture. Her own shabby furniture hadn’t been worth selling, and she’d hauled it to the curb. She was so sick of worrying about money.